Sun renews Web-services effort
By Wylie Wong
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 27, 2001, 4:00 a.m. PT
Sun Microsystems' Chief Executive Scott McNealy for years has proclaimed, "the network is the computer." Yet now that the software world is moving to technology that lives on the network, Sun finds itself trailing arch rival Microsoft in the new battleground of Web services.
On Monday, iPlanet--Sun's joint venture with AOL Time Warner--will introduce key Web-services integration software, more than six months after Sun first announced its entry into that market. Sun executives told CNET News.com that in coming weeks the company will lay out additional details of its plan, including a competitor to Microsoft's HailStorm Web-services initiative.
Sun's renewed push will be its first announcement since unveiling its Sun One Web-services initiative in February, an event the company has backed with little substance.
"All Sun keeps saying is, 'We've been doing this for a long time,' and that doesn't cut it," said Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer.
Sun executives admit the company is late in staking its claim in the Web-services area and has done a poor job explaining its technology and strategy.
"We haven't been doing the best of jobs packaging the story, telling businesses how to take the different bits of Sun software and build them into Web services," said Gina Centoni, Sun's senior director of marketing for Sun One. "We hope to remedy that situation pretty quick."
Sun, Microsoft and other technology companies, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM and a host of start-ups, are developing software to deliver Internet-based services. Some services are as simple as accessing e-mail and documents from cell phones, and others are as complex as sharing rentable business services to power e-commerce Web sites.
With a wealth of Net-ready technology including the Java programming language and the Solaris operating system, Sun should have been a clear leader in defining and developing Web services, analysts said.
"Sun has to get some products out on the street and articulate a vision for Web services, and they have done nothing like that up to this point," Plummer said.
Instead, the company has played catch-up. A Web services announcement from Sun in February, intended to rally developer support, raised more questions about Sun's strategy than it answered, analysts said.
Microsoft, the most vocal proponent of Web services, has in large part defined the playing field that its competitors must now occupy. The company has announced HailStorm, its initiative for delivering content and services to virtually any type of device, and Microsoft.Net, an overarching plan for moving business computing onto the Web, along with plans to deliver by year's end its Visual Studio.Net development tools for creating Web services.
Full article: news.cnet.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Perhaps if Scotty put as much focus on Sun as he does Microsoft, this would not be an issue. IMO, he took his eye off the ball. |
